Letters

Don Schrader on Food and Shelter

I spent $3.01 per day in 2010 and $3.30 per day so far this year for food. I eat much healthier than most millionaires and billionaires! I have never received food stamps!

I consume no meat, no dairy, no booze, no coffee, no pop, no junk food, no baked goods, no cooked food, no meals in restaurants. I eat only raw plant foods!

I grow greens in my garden—collards, lamb’s-quarter, alfalfa, kale. I buy 99-cent discount bags of ripe and blemished fruit. I buy 25-pound bags of organic whole grains and flaxseed. I sometimes salvage fresh fruit from a grocery dumpster. I pick apples, figs, peaches, mulberries and apricots from local trees.

Sadly most people do not know how to do all of this, or they do not have the self-discipline and motivation. Often they are too controlled by corporate advertising and by how their families and friends eat.

I enjoy living in my sunny, bright 9-1/2-foot by 12-foot home—114 square feet—with six windows! My home is a room in the house of a longtime friend.

I have no right to a much larger home while many millions worldwide have no home.

The bigger the house, the more materials were used to build it and the more stuff bought to fill it.

The bigger the house, usually the more energy consumed to heat or cool it—causing more poisoned air and global climate chaos.

The bigger the house, the more repairs to do and the more time spent cleaning it.

The bigger the house, the more destruction to our environment and the more unfair to our sisters and brothers who have no decent shelter.

If I were given the most luxurious mansion in this city, I would not keep it. I would be ashamed to live in it!

Don Schrader

What “Small Government” Really Means

Dear Alibi,

Rick Perry claims to stand for small government yet in Texas pushed and signed a law requiring women to undergo a sonogram before proceeding with an abortion. He would tinker with the Constitution to make the courts weak, and nullify rulings through Congressional action and impose term limits on federal judges, making the judiciary blatantly partisan and subject to partisan whims. He also backs a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man, one woman.

Michele Bachmann preaches the same small government mantra but has flip-flopped on gay marriage, saying in one breath gay marriage is a state matter and in another in the same interview that she backs a Constitutional amendment to ban it. She also signed a pledge in Iowa in July that calls for a ban on pornography as well as gay marriage. She also is stridently anti-choice.

So what small government really means is that the middle class and poor should let big business rape them via fraud, pollution, unsafe working conditions and faulty products. Yet there should be a Department of Vice and Virtue to enforce their theocratic mores on us. Don't these same clowns call al Qaeda, Hamas, the Iranian government and the Taliban "Islamofascists?" Well, given their own views are very similar but from a different holy book, should not they be called "Christofascists?"

Ron McPhee

For the Love of Art Boxes

Dear Alibi,

We saw our new Alibi "art box" this morning in the lobby of UNM's Center for the Arts (a shared space with the UNM Art Museum, Popejoy Hall, Theatre & Dance and our Department of Music). It is FABULOUS! And it coincidentally echoes the wood-grain ’70s steampunk vibe of our strange, illuminated events information "dalek" (or kiosk, if you prefer) in the center of the lobby.

Even cooler that OUR Alibi art box was the one featured on this week's cover [Aug. 25-31]. Thanks for making us feel SPECIAL!

Glinda Wyndorf Administrative Assistant to the Deans College of Fine Arts

University of New Mexico

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